1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program, which are capable of reproducing a program including a video and determining a recommended program based on a user preference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In related art, for example, in television broadcasting and radio broadcasting, in a case of recommending a program to a user, a program matching user preference information is selected based on program information (program meta-data) of an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and the like. A method of recommending a program to a user varies depending on a method of obtaining the user preference data. There are exemplified an initial interest registering method and a viewing history use method. In the initial interest registering method, a user is initially allowed to register information about interests of the user, and a program is recommended based on the above-mentioned information. In the viewing history use method, a viewing history of programs, which the user has been viewed, is used for recommending a program to the user.
In the initial interest registering method, at the beginning of use, the user is allowed to register the program category (for example, Drama or Variety), the genre (Mystery, Comedy, or the like), or the name of an entertainer, which the user likes. Then, through using the above-mentioned information as a keyword, matching is performed between the keyword and the program meta-data. In this manner, the name of a program to be recommended is obtained.
However, in the case where a program is selected according to the initial registration method, only fixed interests of the user at the initial time when the user has been performed the registration of his or her interests can be reflected. In addition, in order to obtain detailed information, the registration operation by the user becomes complicated, unfortunately. In a case where a smaller number of pieces of information are registered in order to simplify the input operation of the information to be registered during the initial setting in view of the above-mentioned circumstance, only recommendation based on the general preference information of the user can be performed. Thus, the accuracy of selecting a program meeting the user preference becomes lower, unfortunately.
In contrast, in the viewing history use method, every time when the user views a program, meta-data of the viewed program is accumulated. At a time when the history meta data is accumulated in some extent, the metadata is analyzed, to thereby obtain information about the program category, the genre, or the name of an entertainer, which the user likes, for example. Then, through using the above-mentioned information as a keyword, matching is performed between the keyword and the program meta-data. In this manner, the name of a program to be recommended is obtained. Therefore, it is unnecessary to perform the cumbersome registration operation by the user as in the case of the initial registration method.
Further, the following technique is disclosed as the viewing history use method. Specifically, the attribute of a program is represented as vector information for each of defined attribute items such as a title, a genre, and a performer. Meanwhile, vector information, which is similar to the above-mentioned vector information, but represents a preference of a viewer, is generated based on the viewing history. Then, the former and the later are compared to each other in order to indicate a program meeting the viewer preference (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-160955).